It's quite possible that America's first "reality" experiment was the Loud Family. An American Family, a 1973 PBS documentary series granted us unique access to the inner confines of the Loud family home of Patricia, Bill, Lance, Kevin, Grant, Delilah, and Michelle, allowing viewers a daily glimpse into a domestic reality never-before-seen.

In other words, trespassing, without the fine. 27 years and one Internet later, our desire to peep has come full-circle as televised reality romps such as Survivor and the more sterile Big Brother seem like prerequisite pop culture fare, depicting duplicitous contestants, vying for monetary reward and more notably, fame.

And it's only getting worse -- perversely worse. From saboteurs to moles to infidels, early 2001 is fraught with enough abstract reality concepts, Kubrick himself would've watched eyes wide shut. As the year he envisioned for new frontiers falls victim to shameful versions of travel into a different unknown, network programmers and producers are affecting an intellectual drought for entertainment's sake - or so they think.

Offering the easily indulged a swamp filled with "water cooler" moments, Survivor's denigration of rats-as-dinner is perhaps the most telling cue to this debasement. Though I must admit, I got caught up in it. Characters corrupted by a generous cash prize, driven to manipulate one another through greedy enticements (i.e. immunity), seemed an intriguing experiment to study during dinner. Watching Richard, the cocky gay nudist, win out over all the kinder souls such as Sonja, the 63-year old musician who got banished first from the island because she couldn't remain buoyant, bore an eerie resemblance to the natural selection I witness everyday. It doesn't help that these reality programs are cheaper to produce than the one hour drama or the 30 minute sit-com. Or that the entertainment industry is bracing itself for a potential strike this spring, if the writers and actors guilds do not settle their current contract disputes with the Producer's Guild. For whichever reason, Hollywood has stocked up on reality formats this winter as if all creativity will soon cease to exist.

As networks pray desperately for the next hit to finance their fall schedule (or at least win them a BMW in the "Pat-On-The-Back" sweepstakes), viewers are getting saddled with the programmer's reality - namely, that banal individuals are sufficient, so long as conceptual thinkers...and good casting agents exist. Using Survivor's overwhelming ratings success as its compass, every network from ABC to the WWF-dependent UPN have equipped their programming schedule with a few dashes of peeper's delight. Here's a sample of the proof:

* Love Cruise - www.fox.com° -- eight single men and women booze-cruisin' the high seas in bikinis, voting their unpopular shipmates off, while encouraged to make waves however they dream possible.
* The Mole - www.abc.com° -- 10 contestants are faced with mental and physical challenges...and a ¨mole' -- determined to sabotage the progress of the group.
* Temptation Island - www.fox.com° -four couples at a relationship 3crossroads2 are put on a tropical island, where they're tempted by attractive strangers, attempting to lure them out of ambivalence.

Nothing like some good clean infidelity to liven up the ratings. And it doesn't stop there. Chains of Love, Road Rage, The Bus, Boot Camp, and Through the Window are floating around, waiting to compete for national satiation. So long MTV's Real World...and hello' newly contrived, real world. For those of us who suffered through Big Brother, we've learned a valuable lesson about these shows: People without formal training to entertain, frankly, aren't that interesting to watch.

Actually, America's Big Brother couldn't have been worse had it been cast in a morgue. In the U.K. version of Big Brother, there were fireworks because a contestant was caught cheating. In Spain, trapped opponents had sex and multiple orgasms ensued. In America, it was the audience who got screwed. Everyone in the CBS version was so focused on being a saint that they discovered precisely where entertainment ain't. Survivor creator Mark Burnett said it himself. "If there's no possibility for danger, then there's no adventure." This, after Burnett sold a $40 million reality-pitch to NBC called Destination Mir, where contestants were to compete for a trip to the Russian Mir Space Station -- a place, apparently, Russian astronauts themselves don't even want to be. They'll crash Mir into the Pacific Ocean in February. Burnett, however, is still scouring outer space looking for the next best thing. Sorry Mr. Kubrick, what was that about a space odyssey?

And the worst has yet to come. Court TV aired a few episodes of Confessions last year -- depicting convicted murderers confessing their crimes via videotape for your viewing pleasure. After strong ratings, Confessions' producers realized they'd struck a chord, so they added a panel of attorneys to the show in order to generate more sympathy. Shockingly, that didn't work. Court TV ultimately pulled Confessions off the air, citing their own poor taste.

What's next? Nudity? Sex shows? If you've ever watched Blind Date, you've realized that prime-time eyes are only one blurry splotch away from both. How about death and human sacrifice? Laugh, but there are no signs of calm after the storm. Network forecasts are packed with reality fare. With the hype machine behind Survivor 2: The Australian Outback revving to about 7-ppm's (plug's per minute), America prepares to become re-obsessed with the clique-oriented, stab-them-in-the-back-with-a-serrated-boomerang lifestyle down under.

The scariest part of this reality trend is that voyeurism is a true cousin of narcissism -- so, in the end, it's all about us. It's about us finding people on TV who we finally relate to. It helps us feel better about our own isolation, if just to learn who's making more of a fool themselves than us. Hence, the pseudo-documentary style to most of these shows. They're expertly stage-managed and edited to resemble a sort of spontaneity or “reality.” But they're not really ‘real.' In PBS' Loud family chronicles back in ‘73, Lance actually came out as a gay man and Pat, the mother threw her husband Bill out of the house. Would that have happened “at that time” if cameras had not been present? Who knows. Perhaps that's the most disheartening aspect. The more we allow ourselves to get sucked in, the less the truth seems to matter. Accountability is forsaken for entertainment's sake. And judging by the numbers, gulp, the reality is it's working.

In the reality climate of ‘anything-goes,' I have a few suggestions for any programming executives who may tugging at hair-strands, looking for the next best thing: “UltraSounds” - a VH1 dance contest for still-unborn fetuses, where a panel of pregnant females submit their wombs to the music of today's top boy bands. Hosted, of course, by Danny Tario. “No Strings Attached” - a pageant for male studs to see who wins the right to donate a fecund wad of sperm (for the $100,000 grand prize) to a lesbian-in-waiting. “Donor Relocation Plan” sold separately. “Friend or Phobia?” - 15 contestants, most suffering from an acute phobia, are all bundled tightly together on the roof of a 95-story skyscraper at night, and forced to cope with confrontational situations testing their quick wit. Last one conscious wins. “What's My Drug?” - a group of recovering drug addicts suffering a lapse of nostalgia compete to correctly identify symptoms after undergoing a blind taste test of several foreign substances. Winner gets a free trip to Colombia. “SugarMamas” - a handful of the world's most despicable female millionaires compete for the opportunity to land eligible pride-swallowing, bachelors in this geriatric adventure of true subservience. Pre-nuptials, not allowed. “America's Funniest Police Videos” - think Cops, the out-takes. LA's finest botching crimes while trampling on their code in this romp of ethical breach. Enhanced TV version includes the pop-up videos bubbles for pure comedy effect. (i.e. Rampart, here we come!)

To see more detailed treatments, please e-mail me at: grozen1230@aol.com°.
I know not what I do.